K T Rama Rao (KTR) Profile, Wiki

Kalvakuntla Taraka Rama Rao formerly known as KTR, K T Rama Rao born 24 July 1976 is an Indian politician and present Member of Legislative Assembly for Siricilla Assembly Constituency, representing the Telangana Rashtra Samithi.

K T Rama Rao Profile, Wiki

Early life

K T Rama Rao was born in Siddipet an he is the son of K. Chandrashekhar Rao founder of Telangana Rashtra Samithi. He has completed his schooling from St. George’s Grammar school, Hyderabad. He has a Bachelors Degree in Microbiology from Nizam college. KTR has two post-graduate degrees, one is M.Sc in Biotechnology from University of Pune and the other is MBA in Marketing & E-commerce from Baruch College-City University of New York.

Later he worked as Regional Sales Director at INTTRA from 2001 to 2006. He has a younger sister K. Kavitha who is a political activist and honorable member of parliament from Nizambad constituency.

Political Career

Ever since he moved to India, K T Rama Rao started taking interest in party affairs and played an active role. He joined the TRS party full-time in the year 2006.

After joining the party he has actively participated in numerous programs to ensure that the Telangana issue was represented well at the national level.

He actively participated in the Telangana movement from 2009 to 2014. In the 2014 election, he was elected to the Telangana State assembly from Sircilla constituency in Telangana. He has been inducted into the Telangana Cabinet as the minister for IT and Panchayati Raj affairs.

Personal life

K T Rama Rao is married to Shailima and has two children Himanshu and Alekhya.

I came to Hyderabad when I was 10 years old. I was born in Karimnagar and and went to four different schools after I moved here. The first was Amravati Public School at Yousufguda, then Nalanda Public School, Mehdipatnam. I spent most time at St George Grammar School at Abids where I studied from Class 7 to Class 10.

I was mostly at residential schools as Dad being a politician was busy and away from home a lot during our formative years. At times, he didn’t even know what class my sister and I were studying in. But he ensured we had everything we needed.

My mother Shobha was a homemaker and my sister Kavita who was younger, stayed home with her. All credit to my mother for our upbringing because she did not allow us to flaunt our dad’s position or power. She brought us up to believe that position and power are ephemeral and not an inheritance.

I remember the time I did my +2 or Class 11 and 12, at a residential school in Guntur. My friends from that school and I hang out together even today. I was a student by default — I was no topper and nor was I brilliant. I got reasonably good marks. At the Guntur school, we would be given a day off only once every two weeks. The lifestyle at the school was nothing short of an army cantonment. Often, we would bunk classes, jump over the compound wall and go into town. The town was actually 14 kms away from our school so we would hitch rides on trucks as there was no transport available.

We would watch three to four movies in one go — back-to-back. For bunking classes, we did get into trouble. We would be called out in the morning assembly by our principal N S Prakashan. He would relate what we did, we would be fined Rs 50 or something and caned, in front of the assembly. We didn’t mind the fine, we could even withstand the caning — it was the public humiliation that was hard to forget. But other kids at school looked up to us as the cool ones who had successfully dared to break the rules.

Nagarjuna was my favourite hero then. I remember his movie Shiva had been released. It had captured the imagination of the youth with its theme and treatment. I found him rather unconventional. I also participated in the plays or skits that the students put up on the annual day. They were in Telugu and Hindi — we believe that Hyderabadi Hindi is the benchmark for the language, never mind if people choose to ridicule it through Mehmood.

College and beyond: I came back to Hyderabad and did my B.Sc in microbiology, chemistry and botany at Nizam’s College. Then, I went to Pune University to do my M.Sc in biotechnology. The craze to have one’s kids become engineers was just beginning then. My dad’s dream was to make me a civil servant. I wasn’t very keen so I spoke to a cousin of mine who was with the Indian Foreign Service then. He told me that there was no meritocracy, only bureaucracy in the services.

Anyway, my dad was keen so he sent me to JNU in Delhi and I spent a couple of months there. I just couldn’t take it as it didn’t appeal to me at all. The civil services flu had spread to UP and Bihar and there were plenty of contenders from that part of the country.

Because I had pretty much studied in cruise mode, I still had not decided what I wanted to do with myself after leaving college. Dad had been an MLA, transport minister, deputy speaker etc through these years. He always was and still is against any kind of publicity for the family.

I never really flaunted who my dad was and nor did I try to hide it. The way we were brought up, I found these issues people had regarding castes and sub-castes rather silly. So, though he was disappointed, I told him that I could not sit for the civil service exams. Those days, everyone was keen on doing an MBA. It was not a career choice for me but it bought me some time till I figured out what to do. As a student I had always been terrible at maths and in India, to get into any management college of repute, one has to have a brilliant brain for maths.

I decided to take a shortcut. I sat for the GMAT exams where a score over 600 meant I would not have to sit for the entrance test. I managed to get 650 so I was called directly for the interviews by top schools like the NMIMS and S P Jain College in Mumbai, XLRI and the T A Pai in Manipal. I got admission at NM but when I went there, I saw that students were two years younger than me. I felt I wouldn’t fit in. A friend who was studying in the US suggested I come there and since there was no work experience required, I decided to apply. In fact, my sister and I both left for the US within five days of each other, though she went to do her MS in computer sciences.